Just a reminder that the topic is "Intelligent people have 'unnatural' preferences", so please lets keep the discussion in that direction and in general and not discuss each other or try to apply it directly to anyone in particular.

Thanks.

That explains everything.

When I was a little kid and went to church for the first time I asked why people worshipped a cross on fire. My childhood friend's father said it's the cross Jesus died on for our sins. I asked what I did wrong and he said we sin. I was a very well behaved little kid and I don't remember ever doing anything wrong.

I asked why Jesus died and what made him more important than me to God if we're all his children?
Why did God impregnate a woman who already had a lover?
Why did God let his favorite son be murdered?
So he could be an example for us?
Why does God promote the slaughtering of innocent creatures, especially lambs, in sacrifice for him?
To show him how powerful we think he is? How scared of him we are?
Why would God send me to live in eternal pain and suffering for eternity if I do something he thinks is wrong?
Why should I fear the very hands that gave me life?

It never made sense to me even to this day. The more I read the bible the more I find it contradicts itself. I'm happy with who I am and respect all religions (as long as their faith doesn't put others, even animals, in danger.)

I'm a proud Buddhist.

Its a theory. You haven't seen proof, just an educated guess. Apparently the article doesn't cover the large numbers of other influences and peer pressures, etc. that go into making people's decisions. Nor does it discuss the intelligence dictating a possible 'I know better and I'll do what I want' attitude. This failed study is failed because it doesn't take into account every aspect that it possibly can. Granted, not everything is going to be found out, but really, if I can think of items that aren't included, then there really is a problem with spewing this out as a scientific analysis.

I am starting my masters in Clinical Therapy this year and I remember studying IQ carefully. One of the theories I attend is that those with a higher IQ sometimes think alot faster than most. Their brains process things very quickly and thus boredom strikes. It's the age-old story of the 15 year old girl who never turns in homework and fails here exams. They give her an IQ exam and find out that she is a genius. Once they place her into challenging classes she excels. This girl is very typical of genius or near-genius level patterns.

The brain has it's capacity for speed of processing. When a brain overclocks and moves faster it processes information faster. In turn what ends up happening is that high-IQ people run out of things to busy their brains with alot quicker. In turn they look to other challenges. Sometimes those same people look at society and find out for themselves the mysteries of life weren't what they thought they were and thus they are now labelled as abnormal when in reality they may be more advanced.

Now one poster on page one sees a disbelief in God as a mark against intelligence. This is what we call bias. There has never been real proof of God and this is where alot of religious (ANY religion) sometimes runs into an issue. People of higher IQ's sometimes need to see concrete proof. This is very logical in my opinion.

The problem is religious individuals sometimes can't discern between concrete proof and anecdotal proof. They state their book is right but where is the actual concrete proof? I know this sounds inflammatory but let me propose this. How do we know this insn't all made up and your visions of God aren't just maniuplated by a need to believe? Existential schools of psychology explain that lonliness and futility are our biggest problems and so we create worlds in order to appease and allay our fears.

Those who know me will know I am not a huge proponent of IQ testing but sometimes you can't just look aay from raw data. We see high IQ's and sometimes greater success in those with those high IQ's and in the same manner we see more aversion from societal norms.

Great and fabulous post OP. I love psychology (obviously...otherwise I wouldn't want to be one) and this post hits home from what I have studied and experienced. Well done

-Kyo

This is so true, if you are smart you have to think out of the box and choose differently from the mass.
I find its the only way. Intelligence is logic and experience, but your travel to intelligence gain is not complete without at least a minute of open mind and if you won't cross the line and go outside the box...

I think the article is long on opinion and short on science. The methodologies employed are not discussed, even the testing used to determine the IQs isn't mentioned, and the differences in the average IQs are small enough to be statistically insignificant, or due to testing bias. In the examples cited,

Young adults who subjectively identify themselves as "very liberal" have an average IQ of 106 during adolescence while those who identify themselves as "very conservative" have an average IQ of 95 during adolescence...

and

Young adults who identify themselves as "not at all religious" have an average IQ of 103 during adolescence, while those who identify themselves as "very religious" have an average IQ of 97 during adolescence...

The average IQ is of course 100. In each instance, the liberals vs the conservatives and the religious vs the agnostic are nearly equally spaced just a few points on either side of the average.

There are many factors to be taken into account that mediate the results of IQ tests. Cultural and economic bias are two factors that have been cited as significant. Also, if you were to take an IQ test one day, and then take the same test a week or two later, you can expect a two to four point variance in your results, and not necessarily higher on the second test, despite your familiarity with it. So comparing a person with an IQ of 103 to someone with an IQ of 97 does not necessarily give you two people with a vastly different range of intelligence.

Also, since we are only given the averages, one cannot tell what the actual distribution of IQs is; in fact, we don't know how big the sample group was that the averages are taken from. The lower average group could actually possess the members with the highest IQ scores, but in a minority that brings the average down below the higher average group.

So, the article is slightly interesting, but with such sparse detail given, I believe it is impossible to draw anything but the sketchiest of conclusions from it. It certainly doesn't prove that the study supports the headline, unless you believe that averages can accurately describe groups of discreet individuals on a behavioral level. Perhaps a link to the published article would tell us more?

Originally posted by Benji1999

Originally posted by davesidious
To believe in something undemonstrable is delusional.

And what if something exists that by its very nature is undemonstrable ?
It cannot be delusional, as there is no eveidence to the contradict someone's belief.

I disagree. you both have fallen into a negative proof fallacy: that, because a premise cannot be proven false, the premise must be true; or that, because a premise cannot be proven true, the premise must be false.

Let's look at the words being used here:

exists:
verb [ intrans. ]
1 have objective reality or being : remains of these baths still exist on the south side of the Pantheon | there existed no organization to cope with espionage.
• be found, esp. in a particular place or situation : two conflicting stereotypes of housework exist in popular thinking today.
2 live, esp. under adverse conditions : how am I going to exist without you? | only a minority of people exist on unemployment benefits alone.

existence:
noun
the fact or state of living or having objective reality : the plane was the oldest Boeing remaining in existence | the need to acknowledge the existence of a problem.
• continued survival : she helped to keep the company alive when its very existence was threatened.
• a way of living : living in a city was more expensive than a rural existence.
• any of a person's supposed current, future, or past lives on this earth : reaping the consequences of evil deeds sown in previous existences.
• archaic a being or entity.
• all that exists.

demonstrable:
adjective
clearly apparent or capable of being logically proved : the demonstrable injustices of racism

indemonstrable:
adjective
not able to be proved or demonstrated.
• Philosophy (of a truth) axiomatic and hence unprovable.

axiomatic:
adjective
self-evident or unquestionable : it is axiomatic that dividends have to be financed.

unprovable:
adjective
unable to be demonstrated by evidence or argument as true or existing : the hypothesis is not merely unprovable, but false.

Something which is indemonstrable is likely not to exist. In fact, in some sense, God is unlikely to exist, but that does not mean God is not true. If God created all of multidimensional existence, then one might expect God to remain outside of it: when you and your mate create a child, you must remain outside of it, even though all its form is taken directly from you. Therefore, the one true God, if true, is unlikely to exist, since only things within this multidimensional reality can be said to exist.

Language is an unwieldy axe with which to perform such delicate logical, philosophical, and metaphysical surgery. It becomes far too easy to misspeak by choosing words which sound good but do not contain or imply the actual meaning you intend.



[edit on 3/10/10 by without_prejudice]

Originally posted by lordtyp0
Eh, SCIENCE makes claims about the origin of the universe, and all atheists I know of are adherents to science and thus espouse those statements. The irony is the concept of "Causation" has not really been proven. It is presumed that every reaction has a cause because that is what we observe. It is very possible that some things do not need a cause to occur. Possible... just not likely.

I've also thought about how causation has never been proven and I've been really bothered by that. If God exists, then where did God come from? If someone says "he just is" that would indicate there is no cause whatsoever for God and therefore God did not happen for a reason. People, both religious and atheists, put themselves in mind prisons when they make assumptions. People who believe "conspiracy theorists are totally nuts" are definitely in a very serious mind prison in which they are not allowed to believe certain things regardless of whether they are true or not.

But that is a distraction to the main point. You seem to agree we know basically nothing about the root cause(s) of the universe, but still disagree on atheism. I can only figure that you must have a different definition of God. I believe that when people say "God" what people mean when they say that (more than anything else) is "intelligent creator of our universe". So when people say "there is no God" they are saying "there is no intelligent creator of our universe". What do you think people mean when they say "God"?

{edit}(Continued from previous post...){/edit}

He's fond of calling us his "children." I say, and Teilhard said, that we are also his... not "parents" really, but his... his embryo. He fertilized the earth with a breeding pair and let 'em have at it; now, there's billions of bodies here for souls to attach to. And what happens when a soul lives a dismally-brief life on earth? It eventually becomes obvious whether they're good or bad, that's what. The bad ones are tossed into the incinerator for disposal; the good ones are... SAVED (sound familiar?) from that fate. Saved for what?

Let's say you have a dozen eggs in a carton, and you want a nice omelette. You crack the first two into a bowl, and then the third one you crack open releases a huge blast of sulphur dioxide into your nostrils. You reel from the stench and throw it into the garbage disposal, glad you didn't spoil your omelette by putting that egg into it, because it only takes one to ruin the whole thing. This is the same concept, except God isn't making an omelette out of eggs. He's making himself out of souls. No evil souls can be allowed in... and you can't tell whether it's good or evil until you've "cracked it open" and seen its true nature. Nobody looking at cute little baby Hitler in his crib at one month old could have foreseen how evil he would become. If God had simply tossed Hitler's soul into himself without letting it mature and show its true colors, he'd have spoiled himself. All it takes is one; God can't allow any through. That's why we're here, and it's why we have a time limit to prove ourselves one way or the other. Some people only get a few hours to do it; some get over 100 years. It wouldn't surprise me if every stillborn baby, every killed child, had a soul that was just so obviously good that God immediately "called them home" so they wouldn't have to waste time here being miserable when there was no need for it.

Yes, I know about The Book of Life, within which is written the name of every saved soul, and which was written "before the foundations of the Earth were laid." One might argue, "Well, if God already knows who's naughty and who's nice, why make us go through this living hell?" I have an answer for that. It's to give the evil ones a chance to save themselves. The Book does have the names of initially-evil souls in it, but those souls chose to change and become good instead while they were here. If they'd never come here at all, they'd also never get the chance to turn good. God wants as many good souls as possible to make himself with... thus, the earth. Without it, evil King Saul would never have turned into the good Apostle Paul, for example, and God would be out one soul.

And there we have the meaning of life. Everything you're going through right now is just part of God's filtration process, separating the good and bad eggs. You are here because your true nature cannot be determined before you've matured. You choose to be good or evil, it isn't thrust upon you like blonde hair or gender. This is why free will must never be interfered with by force, even by God. It could allow a bad soul to slip in.

This also explains the existence of Satan. God allowed Satan to come into being specifically to entrap souls that are evil by nature. Satan is flypaper. Satan is merely a temptation, a bug light that evil flocks to (and gets zapped by). Satan is a bug zapper. I wonder why I've never come up with that metaphor before today... anyway.

"Why do bad things happen to good people," you ask? To see if they'll turn against God, of course. Believe me when I say that nothing else on this planet matters. The only important thing is whether you pass the test or not. If you don't, you've got a date with destruction. If you do, you "shall not perish, but have everlasting life." And what's more everlasting than a God who creates himself over and over, perhaps improving himself a little each cycle by getting a few more souls to join him? Once he exists, he goes back in our time and does it all over again. He is his own beginning, his own ending, and all he wants is for as many of us to join him as possible. The cycle may never end.

"Remain true to yourself," Teilhard wrote, "but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge."

I'll see you on the mountaintop.


[edit on 3/11/2010 by Thought Provoker]

Originally posted by constantwonder

This website needs more cross examination in theories and or ideas alot of ideas simply cross themselves out!

Anyway its a great read. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.



[edit on 25-2-2010 by constantwonder]

isn't atheism/evolutionary theory the norm? i seem to remember it being taught in every public school in america. *cough*dispite lack of evidence*cough*

while there are probably generalizations that can be made based on someone's intelligence, this sounds more like a "scientifically proven" pat on the back. "see, we're smarter than you, silly religious fanatic, and this proves it!"

Originally posted by Bob Sholtz
isn't atheism/evolutionary theory the norm? i seem to remember it being taught in every public school in america. *cough*dispite lack of evidence*cough*

Where did you go to school? The Soviet Union? The idea that atheism was TAUGHT is public schools is preposterous.